ZuCasa — The Journey to Today — An Introduction to the first Web3 Accommodations Platform & Demo

I am not ashamed to admit it — crypto conferences have become the highlights of my social life. It is hard to pinpoint why exactly, but these gatherings have provided me, year after year, with good experience after good experience; often producing some of my best memories and friendships to date.

For a digital first, internet-addicted industry like crypto, these conferences are explosive IRL gatherings that extend significantly beyond professional goals and activities. I used to plan my conferences around other aspects of my life. Now, I plan my life around multiple “can’t miss” conferences where I can see my friends and talk about all the stuff I truly care about. And, although it sounds crazy, I am not alone. Tens of thousands of crypto-natives are riding the conference merry-go-round, especially since the pandemic ended, and together are redefining what society can look like.

However, the physical realm is not made for Web3. Housing options work for us as individuals, but never for digital communities, DAOs, and other, non-corporate groups of travelers seeking to stay close during the same date. Corporate bookings simply do not cut it for web3.

This is why I am building ZuCasa; a web3 native accommodations provider for web3 pop-up cities and conferences. A tool tailor made to help the realization of the Network State transformation while making web3 gatherings more fun and more accessible for all. In this article, I explain what ZuCasa is, why it makes sense, the journey thus far, and what we plan to do next.

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The first time that ZuCasa came to me was in 2023. After two years of COVID-induced isolation in my hometown, late 2022 finally allowed me to travel across Europe to a number of major Ethereum events to see my friends and explore industry developments. This was the case for many others who were basically starved from these experiences for more than two years. In the months to come, I coordinated with some of my closest industry pals to attend some of the biggest events in the year together. We started booking trips around similar dates, splitting accommodation costs across all of us, and, honestly, just having a blast living together as crypto nerd-bros and sisters.

Suddenly, while in Istanbul, my conference experience turned up to 11. DevConnect and ZuConnect — a mini pop-up city that pushed all attendees to book apartments in the same neighborhood — allowed all of us to build bigger, better bonds and explore an incredible city in ways that a traditional conference never could. This made me realize that my friends and I were not alone in our efforts to coordinate, and housing with web3 friends not only made the experience better for everyone, it also made it much more affordable. In short, Istanbul was the catalyst that inspired me to focus on ZuCasa fully.

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ZuCasa is a simple concept; we align with the industry’s conference calendar and book accommodations for everyone as a sole purchaser. By leveraging economies of scale and collective bargaining, ZuCasa, and, in extension, the industry, can attain significantly better prices, for substantially better housing options in locations that are near the conference venue.

By converting these reservations into crypto-assets, in our case one-to-one NFTs that represent each available room, ZuCasa allows cryptocurrency to be used for payments while enabling a secondary market where industry stakeholders can distribute each reservation NFTs to their community, allow their community members to trade them amongst each other, and enable these reservations to be used as on-chain collateral.

This is done because hotel bookings are very similar to financial futures, if you think about it. A secondary market like ZuCasa’s allows these organizers to offload excess reservations, and sometimes, if the demand is high, make money doing so. In addition, by utilizing tokenized reservations, holders of these assets can also use them as collateral within DeFi, allowing them to access a portion of the money locked in their reservations. This is especially true for group reservations, which often add up to six-plus figure reservations.

But has this been a problem for the industry? Do people seek such a solution?

Oh, boy, yes! Overpriced accommodations have been a standard phenomenon for anyone that attends these events. During major web3 events, like EthCC and Token2049, hotel room prices often skyrocket the weeks and months before the conference. If you have ever looked to book reservations the month before an event, then you know this problem well. Web3 pop-up cities also have this problem, but on an even larger scale. Organizers do not have the expertise or working capital to effectively manage these month-long group bookings.

ZuCasa is, therefore, here to take on this risk by purchasing these rooms ahead of time, converting them to NFTs, and allowing web3 communities to buy in bulk. In addition, ZuCasa can offer the ecosystem better prices for better locations, since we can attain discounts of up to 35% per room even after adding a margin for the protocol.

So, what have we done about this?

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ZuCasa has already implemented three Proof of Concepts (PoCs) across the globe, one in Portugal and two in Thailand.

ZuCasa Lisbon for Arc Lisbon

The first house, which took place in Lisbon during the Arc Lisbon pop-up city in September of 2024, lasted for 1 month and had four-to-five living in a shared apartment. ZuCasa booked the room on the behalf of everyone involved, and accommodated the roommate coordination. This was an easy task, since almost all of Arc’s and ZuCasa’s participants knew and were friendly with each other. During Arc Lisbon, ZuCasa’s coordination allowed the participants to save roughly between 10–12% in the fees that they would otherwise pay on their own. ZuCasa’s earnings, which are determined by the time frame and scale of reservations, was, expectedly, close to zero. However, the main co-living hypothesis of ZuCasa was first proved in practice in Lisbon.

Thailand, which was the industry’s center in Q4 of 2024, featured two additional PoCs by ZuCasa. One of them, similar to the apartment in Lisbon, lasted for roughly one month in Chiang Mai, where ZuCasa housed 6 people in one apartment in the middle of the city. Chiang Mai’s ZuCasa was a unique experience, where the house was sourced by a community member and friend of ZuCasa, and was later purchased by ZuCasa once the original booker was offered free accommodations by one of the 15 pop-up cities taking place in the city. The organizer of this pop-up city helped ZuCasa fill some of the rooms in the apartment, while the others were occupied by ZuCasa customers and team members.

ZuCasas in Chiang Mai and Bangkok

The same momentum was extended to Bangkok, where DevCon, the largest bi-annual event of Ethereum, took place in mid-to-late November. For the whole week, ZuCasa booked a beautiful villa that was 10 minutes away from the venue by taxi. Each room was occupied by at least one individual, and the house hosted seven people. For both Chiang Mai and for Bangkok, ZuCasa was able to save attendees over 10% in accommodations costs while also producing the protocols first profit, roughly 15–20% of the whole endeavor. These profits were used to cover the accommodation costs of the ZuCasa team for both cities.

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But, as with every young enterprise, these successes were also accompanied by failures. ZuCasa’s official start took place in January of 2024, where we partook into the Zuzalu ecosystem’s Gitcoin Grants. The objectives set by the ZuCasa, then ZuForever, where to host at least 50 people during EthCC and Devcon. To achieve this, ZuCasa would have to commit working capital that would enable the mass and affordable accommodations for the ecosystem.

For both EthCC and Devcon, ZuCasa’s initial aim was to book boutique hotel rooms, en masse, near the venue. For EthCC, 50 rooms were initially reserved by the ZuCasa team, right next to the EthCC venue. The cost, roughly 60.000 EUR in total, would allow us to sell each of these rooms at 1200 EUR each. This price, although somewhat attractive, was not good enough to convince the industry to pre-pay for the accommodations a few months before the conference took place. This created a breach of contract between ZuCasa and the property owner, making us unable to maintain our reservations and ultimately returning these rooms to the property owners. Of course, as it is always the case, more than 30 people inquired about these rooms the week after the rooms were returned to their owners…

Similarly, in Bangkok, our initial approach was to book en masse a number of hotel rooms near the venue. Our property research produced a number of options, however none of them were close enough to the venue. This, which we considered a major roadblock, forced us to find alternatives. The villa we ultimately booked for DevCon limited available rooms to only 7 instead of the 30 rooms we initially aimed for, once again forcing us to turn away a number of people who wanted to stay with us. On the positive note, the rooms we were able to offer to the industry were priced roughly 20% cheaper than our initial price target.

Ultimately, as with any innovation, roadblocks and learning come together, and ZuCasa knew that our route to success would face unexpected bumps. In 2025, now that the product’s PoCs have yielded valuable learnings, our objective is to productize the process and expand the scope. As such, since the end of DevCon, the ZuCasa team has been focused on building out a more complete product and raising the funds needed to expand its offering to a number of web3 conferences and pop-up cities.

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As we enter 2025, we are in an incredible position to move fast, raise funds, and build something that can truly impact our world. Through our industry involvement and research, we have captured the minds of organizers and community attendees. The community knows who we are, understands the problem we want to solve, and is willing to work with us — as long as we have a product. Up until today, we didn’t have this product. Today, we do.

ZuCasa’s V1 is alive. Below you can find demos of our platform:

First demo. Property Owner Creating Account and Listing his Property: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QA-X3pdN9zOp3nyivERP_tHKitAS_n0z/view?usp=drive_link

• TX (create property on-chain): https://sepolia.basescan.org/tx/0x743732d9b868e718b557e11649334a81ce1a70c19ef4568d46f4da430762d6d1
• TX (make property public, thus bookable): https://sepolia.basescan.org/tx/0x6bbd468e6ed97422155296a83712559190777419776609e36a5c2db826626abc

Second Demo: Searching Properties: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ur3lem95WYAHuoz1QWPp1uHdUtZLaAG5/view?usp=drive_link

Third Demo: Request Dates to stay: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XCvkf5vWxFEKg2or_ffYt9YgxJR06bQC/view?usp=drive_link

• TX:https://sepolia.basescan.org/tx/0x453e37c13a11dd1d95382eff69e4fe025a19cd4093a3d12a66957e278a3aae26

Fourth Demo: Approve Request: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c1HJzZEHljVfFKGzVqwU6bkEPQ1q96Jx/view?usp=drive_link

• TX (mints the NFT and moves funds to an Escrow linked to the NFT. Collects funds for the platform as well): https://sepolia.basescan.org/tx/0x9aef180ebb7739a9fa87334204071892569b7ff2373c5403edbf3d4945db33d8

Fifth Demo: Place Booking for resell. Right now you can only resell the whole booking: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yHahGNf-KWVOq4yR6QloI8RARYG9rW1z/view?usp=drive_link

• TX: (places BNFT to Marketplace so people can bid and buy it): https://sepolia.basescan.org/tx/0x0a4c5f9af62474b5ccdf93bfe86fa80f4e4e7b8f4bcc371621b6c49337e6d05e

Sixth and last Demo: Purchase resold Booking: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tUKII6BKDQfIVz8Xxy-QL5Z6dUZJQFFE/view?usp=drive_link

• TX (transfer of NFT, funds and fees): https://sepolia.basescan.org/tx/0xa64bbda7b7fcbc087f30b43dfc0446638a97c56f81bd480d03c0286cf2e39326

This is a V1, which will go over a few changes in the months to come. We need to make it lean and we need to make it real. This is the main objective of our team, besides fundraising, which is necessary for the offering of group reservations to our community.

Furthermore, picking our next target events is very important. Below is our tentative list of targeted events that ZuCasa aims to offer accommodations. The list starts from the most immediate event and focuses primarily on H1, 2025.

ZuCasa Events for 2025

• Crecimiento Aleph 3 (Mar. 5th — Mar. 28th) *
• SXSW (Mar. 7th — 15th) *
• Arc Austin (Mar. 3rd — Apr. 3rd) *
• Vitalist Bay (April 4th — May 29) *
• Ipe City (Apr. 22nd — May 22nd) *
• NFC Lisbon (Jun 7th — Jun. 9th)
• EthCC (Jun. 30th — July 3rd)
• DevConnect (November)

Now that the product v1 is almost up and running, our biggest limitation remains our ability to source sufficient working capital to deploy housing options at all these venues simultaneously. This is our number one priority for Q1, and without the appropriate funds we know that our offering will not be sufficiently valuable enough to scale — a learning that we found out the hard way last year in Brussels.

To achieve this, we are in the process of combining out angel fundraising efforts with a public community sale on a number of networks. More on this soon. If you want to stay informed, please feel free to join our community here: https://t.me/zucasa

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ZuCasa’s path has only now started. ZuCasa mission, to me, is clear — we are building the home for all web3 societies. We are, for now, providers of a solution that makes the life of organizers and attendees 10 times easier, a lot more affordable. There is no better way to do this than to kick ass in web3 conferences, providing incredible places to stay with incredible people, and collecting new users and citizens through pop-up cities at the same time.

We are their home in web3 conferences, first, and pop-up cities, second. But that is not our endgame.

As the Network State emerges, ZuCasa is going to be the onboarding ramp for housing members of this emerging digi-society. ZuCasa’s endgame is to own and operate the properties that the Network State will emerge from. This is our identity. This is our long term goal.

We are part of a transitioning generation. Every major institution that we grew up with is failing to meet expectations. Network societies seem to be the evolution of society in the internet phase. As such, we have a responsibility to make better alternatives real and approachable. Zuzalu-like communities will become the only jurisdiction that can provide their citizens with the freedoms and opportunities that make life worth living.

We, as ZuCasa, are here to enable this movement. And this is why “Mi Casa” is always “ZuCasa”.

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As we conclude, ZuCasa is actively fundraising to make this vision a reality. We are always open to discuss with any and all potential stakeholders, investors, partners and community organizers.

Any and all feedback is welcome. Let’s make 2025 the year of ZuCasa!